What is the purpose of life?

An eternal question, what is the purpose of life?, occupied philosophers’ thoughts throughout history. Stone pictographs reveal even primitive peoples reflected on this query. Each one has the capacity to define his or her personal thinking about politics, economics and religion.

Discussion Forum

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has gathered evidence that a secret meeting in Seychelles just before the inauguration of Donald Trump was an effort to establish a back channel between the incoming administration and the Kremlin — apparently…Continue

"I'm reminded of a great observation during Nixon's deposing (can't source ATM, think it can from a correspondent of the LondonTimes): the most powerful man in the world is being forced from office against his will, and the only policeman in sight from outside the White House is directing traffic."

The Linkage between politics and religion is often difficult to break.

Currently, here in Canada, the conservatives have an all out smear campaign against Justin Trudeau. It started with his insistence that his party will be pro-choice, no debate. It has led into a bunch of fabricated lies, but started with the abortion issue.PC's, like the republicans, are known to be anti-science and anti-environmental legislation.

Many Christians are weighing the liberals pro-choice against the PC's destruction of science and the environment and decide that getting their anti-abortion opinions enforced is more important than the condition of the air, water, and food their children will experience.

If enough religious people believe that, the government gets changed.It doesn't make sense considering pro-choice is just not making abortion illegal. It's not forcing anyone to do anything, nor dictating what religions believe. Yet, the religions want to enforce their beliefs on the rest of society. And if there is enough of them, they can do it through their vote.

The English owned the fertile farmlands of Ireland and the Irish farmers grew the potatoes and grains that were shipped to England. The English passed laws that the farmers could eat only potatoes and if they ate grains the farmers would be hung and their families left fatherless and homeless.

"Up to now, the popular theory is that the Irish were promiscuous, slothful, and excessively dependent on the potato. As a result they died by the hundreds of thousands when a blight appeared and ruined their food source, in the midst of one of the fastest economic growth periods in human history.

"Was the Potato Famine an ecological accident, as historians usually say? Like most famines, it had little to do with declines in food production as such. Adam Smith was right that "bad seasons" cause "dearth," but "the violence of well-intentioned governments" can convert "dearth into famine."

"In fact, the most glaring cause of the famine was not a plant disease, but England's long-running political hegemony over Ireland. The English conquered Ireland, several times, and took ownership of vast agricultural territory. Large chunks of land were given to Englishmen."

"Scientists have long known that it was a strain ofPhytophthora infestans(orP. infestans) that caused the widespread devastation of potato crops in Ireland and northern Europe beginning in 1845, leading to theIrish Potato Famine."

"The early 19th century, Ireland’stenant farmersas a class, especially in the west of Ireland, struggled both to provide for themselves and to supply the British market withcerealcrops. Many farmers had long existed at virtually the subsistence level, given the small size of their allotments and the various hardships that the land presented for farming in some regions. The potato, which had become a staple crop in Ireland by the 18th century, was appealing in that it was a hardy, nutritious, and calorie-dense crop and relatively easy to grow in the Irish soil. By the early 1840s almost half the Irish population—but primarily the rural poor—had come to depend almost exclusively on the potato for their diet. The rest of the population also consumed it in large quantities. A heavy reliance on just one or two high-yielding types of potato greatly reduced the genetic variety that ordinarily prevents the decimation of an entire crop by disease, and thus the Irish becamevulnerableto famine. In 1845 a strain ofPhytophthoraarrived accidentally fromNorth America, and that same year Ireland had unusually cool moist weather, in which theblightthrived. Much of that year’s potato crop rotted in the fields. That partial crop failure was followed by more-devastating failures in 1846–49, as each year’s potato crop was almost completely ruined by the blight.

"The British government’s efforts to relieve the famine were inadequate. Conservative Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel continued to allow the export of grain from Ireland to Great Britain."

"About one million people died from starvation or from typhus and other famine-related diseases. The number of Irish who emigrated during the famine may have reached two million. Ireland’s population continued to decline in the following decades because of overseas emigration and lower birth rates. By the time Ireland achieved independence in 1921, its population was barely half of what it had been in the early 1840s."

Loren, I like your "So Called Christians." and your "delegitimize multiple other regulatory agencies under his administration".

It will take years to repair Trump's administration and the Republican Conservatives. What do they want, a healthy, active, golf playing, party-giving, garish-White-House-Xmas- decorating-rich-class? And The rest of the population going the way of Irish Famine? Let us not forget that the Irish Famine was caused by the British landowners who worked the Irish to death and made it a crime to eat the grains the English grew in Ireland by the Irish, whose only "legal" food supply was rotting potatoes.

It only took five years from the start of the famine to the end for a million Irish to die of starvation, a million to immigrate to other counties, and a million to stay behind and recover their lives and their health.

"Trump refers to his ambitions with canine instincts, e.g., he wants to spend $1.5 trillion on new nuclear weapons to make sure the USA is at the “top of the pack.” We only have a few more than 7,000 of them live, locked, and loaded, prepared to overkill humankind by a factor of seven, so it’s important to add more, right? Arf."

How many times does Trump want to kill life on Earth? The wretched planet will be a mere crisp and no one knows we ever existed.